Politically Incorrect Africa Aids Tweet Goes Awry

The Africa Aids Tweet by Justine Sacco has caused mayhem on the Net: Was she insensitive, naive or just careless? This picture speaks a 1000 words about her personality, but of course analysts on the Web are looking deeper into her profile to get some real answers.

Source: sandrose.com

If she handles how well the advertizing agency, IAC appears to the rest of the world, surely she must have taken a short haitus from her work-orientation while posting a quick tweet before taking a flight to South Africa from London.

Justine's Tweet on Africa exposes her excitement about visiting her father's homeland, implying that she has most likely visited South Africa before and she is aware of the Aids epidemic at least in the context of Africa, where it is a grave concern for millions of people dying from the disease. A well-read PR exec would also know that there is no cure for HIV or Aids at the moment, although some new discoveries were made and screening for use on humans may not be far off in the future.

Here are some commentaries floating around the web about what might be a motive or the circumstances behind the tweet:

Probably a form of provincialness among her social circle...they all feel that way, so her feeling that way, even giving voice to it, was not viewed by others in her life as offensive, so nobody ever told her that saying such things was wrong.

People are liable to say anything on social media. I've been on the internet for a long, long time. People get used to the anonymity and they let their shields down. In Sacco's case, it got her fired & her world turned upside down.

An employer is within their right to fire an employee for such a tweet. And that seems like an appropriate punishment. IAC also asked for compassion and to offer a chance for redemption.

Sacco has learned that words have consequences-very serious, and very real consequences.

I just hope people are willing to offer a chance of redemption to more people than those who can handle a football or make a 3-point shot.

I still don't understand this call for punishment. She didn't break any laws. She wasn't working or representing her company when she made her tweets. She was only representing herself. She wasn't a public personality either. 

Its a type of thought control. Vicious in retribution and undefined in direction or scope or even in what precisely causes it's abhorrence. It pretty much comes down to...If we don't like you, burn baby burn.

It's interesting that in the world of leftist political correctness, if you engage in strange or aberrant sex acts, or were a porn star, then what you do in your private life has no effect on your job.

If, however, you are the slightest bit politically incorrect in a tweet not related to work, then you are sacked.

If it weren't for double standards, the leftists would have no standards at all.

One can't help but wonder if the general alarm and offense of Sacco's comments wasn't so much what she said, that it was in poor taste was a given but perhaps what was more alarming was the cavalier way she went on to express a point of view that may in the end be harbored by many even if they dare not publicly admit to it and that too is the catch.... the head of a pr department going on to betray a kind of privileged stasis that may be tolerated by insiders on the quiet but never openly tolerated when one dares to show off how wonderfully repugnant and insensitive one can be, because they can afford to..... until that is the day they can't.

Really are we surprised Justine Sacco said what she said or is she endemic of a privileged breed that harbor such points of views....???

Looking at some more figures on Aids in Africa, 14 million African children are orphans due to this epidemic. The count for South Africa is 17.3% when it comes to adults with HIV/AIDS. There's nothing amusing about these figures and only difference about kidding about these figures is that some of us don't have HIV/AIDS, while others have been infected or are AIDS carriers. 

Lesson learned from AIDS tweet that 'launched a thousand ships.' More of us should deliberate before tweeting personal comments on Twitter, Facebook or on any other social media tool, which is generally encouraging when there is a win-win situation and a positive outcome for all - and that includes Africa tweets on the Net.